Sure, Derek Jeter's having a pretty spectacular season. The Captain's coming off a tour-de-force road trip to the West Coast, where he hit in all seven games and collected multiple hits in all but one, bumping his average up to a robust .331.

But let's face it, Jeter's no Pete Browning.

The original Louisville Slugger, who hit a .341 in 15 long-forgotten big-league seasons, was a four-time league batting champion, and one of just 11 players in the history of organized baseball to amass six or more 20-game hitting streaks, despite being deaf for most of his career; and, by all accounts, a notorious drunk.

To put that company in perspective, it's worth noting that eight of the other 10 men who had six or more 20-game streaks -- Ty Cobb, Wee Willie Keeler, Chuck Klein, Napoleon Najoie, Stan Musial, George Sisler, Tris Speaker and Paul Waner -- are ensconced in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The ninth, Pete Rose, made himself ineligible for the Hall when he copped a plea with commissioner Bart Giamatti, after getting caught betting on baseball.

And Ichiro Suzuki's still legging out hits for the Mariners.

That means Browning's the only one on the list who's eligible for the Hall of Fame and hasn't been inducted, which is how he wound up being selected as the Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend for 2009 by the Society for American Baseball Research.

"Part of what we're trying to do is identify some of the best players from that era," Pete Mancuso, the chairman of SABR's committee on the 19th-Century game, is saying as Jeter and the Yankees sleep in before the start of a three-game series in Boston.

"That way, when the Hall of Fame is ready to re-examine some of the 19th Century guys, we've got a pool of them."

Mancuso, who learned the rudiments of the game in the PS 16 schoolyard, would know.

The retired New York city police sergeant has found pinning down the stories of long-lost ballplayers from a time when there was no internet ... and only some counties recorded births and deaths ... isn't that far removed from his old job.

"The parallel is you're putting the pieces together, trying to find the real story," he says.

Like every other researcher, Mancuso's got his favorites, like Deacon White, a catcher who got the first hit in all of organized baseball, a single against the Fort Wayne Kekiongas of the newly-organized National Association in May of 1871; once hit .387 for the Boston Beaneaters; and caught the fastest pitchers of the day without a mask, chest protector or shin guards.

"And without a glove," Mancuso adds, making Johnny Bench or Thurman Munson seem like sissies by comparison. "The only piece of safety equipment catchers used in those days was a piece of rubber they held between their teeth."

When you wonder if that was in case they got hit in the face, Mancuso laughs.

"In case they got hit in the teeth," he says. "They got hit in the face all the time."

A few years ago, Mancuso was the one who did the bulk of the research for the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame on Brewery Jack Taylor, who won 120 big-league games but went to his eternal rest without so much as a headstone marking his grave, and without a place in his hometown Hall of Fame.

Thanks in large measure to Mancuso's research, he now has both.

And don't get the old cop started on Tuck Turner, a .320 lifetime hitter in six big-league seasons, born and raised in West Brighton, who isn't in the Staten Island Hall of Fame, never mind the one in Cooperstown.

"He belongs," Mancuso says, before pointing out that in 1994 Turner hit .410 and still finished second in the National League batting race behind Hugh Duffy's .440, giving Turner the highest average of any hitter who didn't win a batting title.

Or at least until some SABR researcher comes across some long-lost ballplayer who hit in even worse luck.

"I tell guys we should preface every statement with 'What we know so far ...'" Mancuso says.

The ex-cop's got a new grandchild, a business to run, and a desk full of ancient newspaper clippings, box scores, and archived records from a time when baseball's legacy was being built from the ground up by men who played hard, drank hard, and caught the toughest pitchers of the day with nothing but a piece of rubber between their teeth for protection.

"There's always another piece of information around the corner," he says.